Must-See TV

There’ll be a rebroadcast of Understanding Conditioning, my landmark video on exercise and conditioning -- on Thursday, October 12, on Channel 52 (Oahu), from 3:30 pm for the hour video. However, if one misses any part of it, they can tune in at any time -- and it still makes sense because it is not in the format of 20th century and older sequential information processing and accessibility presentation, but is characteristic of the newer mode of randomly-accessed information -- on demand, and as needed, in the holographic model.

That is, one doesn’t have to learn the 99% of the irrelevant -- and not miss any of it, to learn and benefit from the 1% they really want and need. That is also how the academic tradition differs from the state-of-the-art model of being informed only with what is required in the present task -- because all the rest doesn’t matter and is a distraction, a diffusion of focus.

The essential lesson in Understanding Conditioning, is that if one devotes all one’s resources and focus to a single, clearly understood task -- it is always very easy, and achievable. But when that objective and purpose is not clear, one is not even sure what results one is getting -- much less being able to measure them.

That is also the great problem of education -- in which the objective seems to be about ensuring job security for teachers and especially education professionals and administrators -- instead of the much simpler learning to do what needs to be done. Much of “education” is actually disconnected from any doing -- and becomes learning for learning’s sake, creating the artificial need for infinitely more learning (education).

But the human being does not have infinite resources to do so -- to learn what is simply impressive to exhibit some day (one hopes). Meanwhile in all the practical tasks and activities of one’s life, there is no manner of applying any of that “knowledge” to the present situation, and so there is no advantage to being “smart” in that way. The academicians and educators will even deride that kind of practicality and common sense as something quite beneath their noble exercises -- which have value because they are “useless“ and “theoretical” -- and is therefore, academic.

That is the compartmentalization and fragmentation of the world of thought from the world of action -- which creates further fragmentation, division and conflicts we see expressed as partisanship -- which means as it sounds, a partial view of the process rather than the totality and comprehension of it. Once one begins with this fractured view, it’s not possible to put this reality together again.

So one must begin wholly, simply, with the one clear objective and purpose. In exercise and effort, that would be understanding and achieving the flow of that activity -- which every great practitioner and performer recognizes is the perfection of what they do. At that moment, there is total integration -- of mind and body, doing and understanding -- and not every part competing against every other part, creating more work, jobs, expertise and confusion.